MEMORIAL DAY. 



ADDRESS AT 

FT. MADISON, IOWA, 



BY 



THOMAS HEDGE, 



MAY 30, 1390. 









Memorial Day 



ADDKESS AT 



FT. MADISON, lA., 



THOMAS HEIDQEI, 

MAY 30, 1890. 

The story of the rise of civil and religious liberty on 
this continent is full of incongruities and of contradic- 
tions. The Pilgrim Fathers planted their commonwealth 
among the gray rocks of Massachusetts, that they might 
have freedom to worsliip God; but we remember they com- 
pelled the flight to Narragansett of the learned and sincere 
Roger Williams, the friend of Milton, chiefly because he 
held forth that the civil magistrate's power extends only 
to the bodies, goods and outward state of man, and thus 
the other commonwealth of Rhode Island and Providence 
plantations had its beginning. 

It has been an American custom, reaching back to the 



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days of our grandfathers, to read in public, with religious 
solemnity, the Declaration of Independence on the morn- 
ing of the Fourth of July, and the winged words of Jeffer- 
son — "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 
men are created equal; endowed by their Creator with 
certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, lib- 
erty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these 
rights governments are instituted among men deriving 
their just powers from the consent of the governed" — we 
imagined, because they stirred our blood, that they set 
forth our profoundest faith. But it is only thirty years 
since no American citizen was permitted to speak in the 
spirit of those words below the lower rapids of yonder 
river, and only thirty years ago that if that American citi- 
zen should stretch forth his hand to help any man, woman 
or child, of a certain class, to cross that river in search of 
that unalienable right of liberty, he would be guilty of a 
crime against the government whose symbol was this flag. 
(We are not ashamed to remember that there were not a 
few criminals of this sort in this neighborhood in those 
days.) 

We were not in spirit a nation or a union, but a most 
heterogeneous aggregation of peoples, under the yoke of as 
many various customs, traditions, prejudices and bigotries 
as there were different communities. State lines were a 
reality, sectional feeling and mutual dread as impassable 
as the mountain range. 

The truth spoken by him who was more than prophet, 
'This country cannot remain half slave and half free,' at 
last became evident, and the darkness came and the labor 
and agony of the new birth of freedom. 

It seemed as if the spirit of the Lord moved over the 
face of the land and breathed again into the nostrils of 
this people the breath of life. The eyes of their under- 
standing were opened; it was given to them to see the 



invisible, to stand upon the Mount of Transfiguration and 
to be inspired with the presence of tliem of old time who 
had toiled, suffered and triumphed for the good of those 
to be. All human capacities seemed to be enlarged. All 
human faculties to be reinforced. All human affections 
quickened and purified in this fire of trial. The cause was 
seen to be and accepted as the cause common 
and vital to us all. It was the people's war. The 
times grew spacious. Nothing was too great or too high 
for the energy the constancy, the self-denial, the faith of 
this people in their devotion to this cause — ever old and 
ever new — of human liberty. As in the days of the revo- 
lution it called manhood from the tranquil pursuits and 
toils of peace, the delight of life, to absence from home, to 
cold, hunger, the prison-pen, disease, wounds, death; it 
called woman to poverty, to loneliness, to agony of sus- 
pense, to widowhood and bereavement of her first born. 
There were days which were to her as a thousand years, 
when the very air quivered with the tidings of defeat or 
the hardly less dreadful word of victory; when she was 
told that while men of their abundance had cast their offer- 
ings into the treasury she had given more than them all — 
even all her living. 

When this death angel came, although for tears she saw 
it not, the glory of the Lord shone 'round her dwelling- 
akin to that of the star of Bethlehem, for it had been 
vouchsafed to her to bear a son found worthy to die for 
the help of his fellow-men. 

And the boys whom these women with christian grace 
had sent away, these boys whom we bear in memory at 
this hour, deeming it the highest privilege and pride of 
our earthly life that we hobnobbed with them and marched 
with them and were with them where they fell, they made 
up an army such as never had been known before. Their 
understanding comprehended fully the purpose of their 



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warfare — it was not for ambition, for material conquest, 
for personal aggrandizement, nor to relieve themselves of 
personal oppression, for they had never realized the pres- 
ence or approach of any tyranny. The Hag to them was 
but the sign of the enforcement and security of those 
unalienable rights, which they had been trained to believe 
were the birthright of all men. It was such a sign, not for 
themselves or their's alone, not for a class, a sect, a party, 
a generation or a race, but for everyone made in the image 
of God, wherever and so long as that Hag might wave. 

I said that we were a heterogeneous people, marked by 
our provincial prejudices and bigotries. Travel broadens 
the view and dispels the mists of prejudice, and no sort of 
travel so effectually as that pursued by our young volun- 
teer, After the boy from Iowa had trudged alongside of 
the boy from Vermont or Pennsylvania, or of the boy 
whose father was born in Ireland or Germany, and had 
drank from the same canteen, and shared his hard tack, 
had climbed the same opposing earthwork at his side, had 
witnessed his boyish valor "in the imminent deadly 
breach'' ''on the fiery edge of battle,'' and had lain down 
beside him in the swamp and suffered the same cold, the 
same homesickness, he began to realize what Paul meant 
by till men being of one blood; boundary lines and section 
corners vanished, and his love of countrj^, as of his coun- 
trymen, came to comprehend the wide continent, bounded 
only by the inviolate seas. 

He so bore himself that he conquered even the prejudices 
of his opposers, and to-day wherever his grave may be, 
whether by those of his kindred or in the red soil ot Vir- 
ginia, in the mountains of Georgia or Tennesse, or under 
the flowers of Carolina, it is at home, in his own country, 
a pledge and monument of perpetual union, and of ever 
growing peace and good will among its people. 

As something of the duty of tradition mingles in these 



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ceremonies, let me place in the minds of those born since 
the day of Appomattox a hint of the personality of the 
"boy in blue.'' As yon read that "the old 'Continentals' 
in their ragged regimentals faltered not," your fancy pict- 
ures a grizzled soldier toughened by the frosts of many 
winters, when in truth he and the Minute Man and the 
Green Mountain boy, as well as the boy in blue, were of 
the same age, which is yours. The soldier whose memory 
we are met to honor was not such as these to-day — his face 
lined and refined by care, with stooping shoulders and 
whitening hair, and halting step, and eyes grown dim; but 
sucli as these were five and twenty years ago; his face 
bright with hope, his gaze clear and proud with purpose, 
his step firm and sure, with the spring of youth. And my 
veteran brothers, those who were taken away from us at 
the front are now before the vision of our memory as when 
they marched out to die. Imperishable youth is theirs. 
Their fame shall live so long as man loves liberty, the 
example of their sacrifice be an inspiration to future patii- 
otism, their spirits the airy leaders of heroes yet to be. 

It was ordained that they should die in glory — no less 
was it in the infinite purpose that we should survive. The 
earnest lesson of the day is that we learn and fulfil that 
purpose, that while they sleep we guard the field they 
died to win. 

In the quarter of a century that has passed since the last 
surrender we have had time to come down from the Mount 
of Transfiguration, to lose something of the exaltation of 
spirit of the time of war in the dusty scramble for the 
things that perish, and a generation has arisen that cannot 
fully appreciate at what great price their freedom was 
obtained and preserved. We need to be reminded in sea- 
son and out of season that "eternal vigilance is the price 
of liberty." The old theory seems to be regaining its lost 
ground, that the jurisdiction of human government is 
boundless, and its authority without limit; that all things. 



[0] 

including riclies and wisdom and virtue and honor, can be 
attained by the enactment of a legislature. We forget, 
that while government is an essential agency of society — 
supreme within its sphere — that its sphere is limited and 
that it is only an agency, like the Sabbath, made for man: 
that its province is only in public matters, to protect each 
from others' trespasses and to insure to every man 
his own. We do not keep in mind that government can- 
not create or confer the essential rights of man; that as 
Jetl'erson wrote, it is only an institution to seciire these 
riglits, and as it does not create or confer these rights, so 
it cannot justly impair them or take them away. 

So long as men are self-seeking there will be efforts 
made to usurp power in legislation for selfish ends. 
So long as men are self-righteous they will strive to 
impose their own standard of right and wrong upon their 
neighbors, and as the people prefer, or wish to seem to 
prefer, whatsoever things are honest, or true, or of good 
report, with success proportioned to the apparent worthi- 
ness of the end to be attained. Our liberties are in little 
danger from the Philistines; it is the leaven of the Phari- 
see that is the present menace of the republic. 

While it was the duty of the veteran, as a soldier, "not to 
reason why, only to do and die," it is his duty as a veteran, 
citizen always to reason why. To him much has been 
given — of him much shall be required. A sovereign citi- 
zen, to him is intrusted only in fuller measure, and to a 
higher degree, the charge of the Roman consul — to see that 
the republic receives no harm. 

As the sphere of government is limited, so, compara- 
tively, is his duty as a citizen; including this duty, inter- 
twined with it, but infinitely broader and higher, is his 
duty as a man. The conscientious fulfillment of the daily 
round, the common task, is the path laid out for him to 
toil in after virtue. We cannot escape the scrutiny and 



[7] 

the judf^ment of the boy of to-da}^ his notion of the 
defender of the republic, his estimate of those comrades 
over whose repose we this day scatter the rose, the lily and 
the violet, is made up of what he sees in us. Their good 
name is in our keeping. No higher tribute can we pay to 
the fame of the American soldier than "the white flower of 
a blameless life.'* Comrades, brothers ! let our remaining 
days be so disciplined that when our rest is sounded our 
neighbors may mourn each one of us as we mourn these; 
that contemplating a character full rounded, freed from 
stain of ill doing, or rust of indolence, they may say lov- 
ingly and proudly. "As his young comrades died, so this 
veteran lived — for the advantage of his fellow-men." 











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